


[heart] [crying smiley face] [cat face] [eggplant]

by Cortesia



Series: Mrs. Aftby's Daycare; or, Kingsman UK [3]
Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Crack, Gen, Harry/Merlin in the past, M/M, Snapchat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-11
Updated: 2015-11-27
Packaged: 2018-04-14 03:29:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4548609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cortesia/pseuds/Cortesia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>16a. Snapchat (and any similar apps) are hereby banned from use during work hours in, on, and around HQ.<br/>16b. This *especially* includes Mrs. Aftby and Guinevere.<br/>16c. Also Percival, daft bastard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First Victim: Merlin

**Author's Note:**

> My take on the snapchat epidemic. Enjoy!

Mrs. Aftby was really the one to blame. Being the mother of Merlin, she was well aware of technology and what it could do for the world. With that in mind, she went out one fine spring day and bought herself a shiny new iPhone 6. And because she _was_ Merlin’s mother, she promptly took it to him and had him do all sorts of fun and illegal things to it. Now armed with a selfie-snapping taser that could also utilize almost any wifi network (public or private), as well as crack the doors in hotels that used keycards, Mrs. Aftby put it into use.

It began with Guinevere (as these things often did). The knights had gathered around the table, some in person and some via hologram from wherever they were. In the middle of Merlin giving the rundown on some mission or another, Guinevere’s phone chirped. He looked aghast and scrambled to turn it off, enduring Arthur’s mostly disapproving glare and the other knights’ expressions, ranging from Percival’s slight bemusement to Gawain’s outright anger at being interrupted.

And then Guinevere choked so loudly, that the agents physically present, Merlin included, rose to give him a hand. Eggsy looked wide eyed at Merlin, turned an interesting shade of scarlet, and fled the room with a muttered excuse in what Roxy later determined was a mixture of Romani and Portuguese laced with East End slang. The knights looked to their tech genius, who stared after Eggsy’s retreating form with a look of utter confusion on his face. Then his own phone chirped.

Merlin checked it, blinked a few times, and then shot the rest of the table a terrified glare.

Arthur pressed a few buttons on his own clipboard iPad, and the feed from Merlin’s glasses displayed on the holoscreen behind him, as well as on the various screen the non-present knights were looking at. Merlin let out a strangled noise and shoved his phone in his pocket to prevent whatever it was displaying from being seen, but the damage was done. The image burned into the retinas of the entire knight cohort and there was silence.

Then Roxy lost it.

For frozen on the screen behind Merlin’s head was the image from his own glasses feed, perfectly timed to show the Snapchat image he’d received from his dear, sweet mother.

She’d sent him a snapchat of himself. Nude. Asleep next to him was an also very clearly nude Harry Hart (although his face was turned from the camera, the knights knew _that_  shock of curly hair anywhere). Merlin had hair as well, and was in the middle of attempting to both cover himself up and flee the bed that he had been laying in. A look of nearly blurry shock covered his face and one hand was thrown out to the photographer as if to stop them. The photo was clearly an older shot, if the hair and youthful face wasn’t enough of a tell. Certainly the clunky brick of a cell phone resting on the nightstand by the bed was a dead giveaway.

But despite the holoscreen’s contents, what had set Roxy off was not the image itself. No, it was the caption that “Rsmry_Aftby1934” had sent “XxXMeRLiNXxX” accompanying the snap:

_my baby boy and his 1st hunnypot!_ [heart] [heart] [baby face] [okay hand]

Merlin snapped his clipboard in half while Arthur simply looked at the image and said calmly, “I wondered why your mother took that photo. Lovely evening, if I recall.”

He sipped his tea and motioned for Merlin to continue the meeting, Roxy’s tears and snorting notwithstanding. Merlin’s reddened face and destroyed clipboard made for the second of many snaps that began to circulate Kingsman HQ after that.

(And though much strife was caused by that second snap, it was not Roxy who took it. Percival, devious bastard that he was, took it to send to James. The bellowing laughter that resulted was reported to have been heard as far away as the outdoor firing range.)

 

Merlin was not amused.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [red high heel] [ring] [red high heel] [ring] [flame]

The day started well for Alastair Morton-Worthington. His husband of several years, James, had finally been given to go-ahead for beginning fittings for prosthetics, and the mad fool was bound and determined to have the same sort of bladed feet that Valentine’s henchman wore. Alastair had missed traffic, so he got to his coffee shop and then to work in record time. Roxanne, his younger sister and fellow Kingsman agent, was apparently seeing someone new and had spent the better part of the night texting him about this mystery person and the date they’d been on. The sun was shining, his family was happy, and he’d been pleased to see that he’d won a small sum of money on the latest Arsenal match.

So of course, things went to hell in a predictable and humorous manner.

Alastair, or Percival as he was commonly known among Kingsman HQ, noticed the snickering almost immediately, but given the debacle of Mrs. Aftby’s Snapchat several days prior, he thought little of it. He nodded in greetings to various techs and agents, and only became slightly paranoid about the giggles and stifled laughter after the fifth person he nodded to averted their eyes and sped up to pass him.

He pushed it to the back of his mind and made his way to the Bakery. Once an actual office for an allegedly real Kingsman agent (though Percival had his doubts about Guinevere being completely sane in general), it was, for three days a week, a small bakery and tea shop that Eggsy had set up to work off his stress at being a knight. Given the young man’s current inability to be in the same room with Merlin, the Bakery had been open every day while Eggsy wasted nearly an entire week’s paycheck on baking ingredients. He’d even made obscure tarts and cakes that Harry had offhandedly mentioned in a conversation _once_. Yesterday before leaving the office for the evening, Tristan and Bors had cornered Percival with a stack of papers and index cards, each bearing a more convoluted and horrifically specific recipe that they’d conjured from the denizens of both the internet and some long-dead relative’s recipe box.

_“Perce! You must bring in something for him to try! The lad’s been working on any recipe we can put in front of him. Two days ago, James dropped by in-between some sort of PT and another appointment and left a biscuit recipe from his great-grandmother using ingredients that literally don’t exist anymore, and the cracked boy had them ready to go this morning for him! James said they tasted exactly as he remembered, and then muttered something about where Eggsy could find that particular cultivar of opium seeds given that the opium trade had been shut down from that region of Southeast Asia for almost 80 years!”_

Alastair hadn’t actually asked _why_ James had a biscuit recipe that included raw opium and the corresponding poppy seeds, but was certain he was going to find out when he least expected it.

So, it was no surprise that when he opened the door to the Bakery, it was full.

And every single person inside was staring at him with varying expressions of amusement and outright glee at him. Alastair narrowed his eyes and felt around in his pocket for his Kingsman-issue lighter (an actual lighter, not the explosive one. That one was in his _other_ pocket). Rubbing the flint wheel made him feel calmer. Eggsy’s iPhone was plugged into the dock he’d set up ion one corner, blaring only mildly offensive pop music.

“Mornin’ Perce! Got somethin’ extra special made up for you today!” Eggsy’s gleeful and happy voice called out over from the kitchen portion of small, warm office. Alastair nodded his thanks and sat down in the large, comfortable chair that Mrs. Aftby usually claimed. Harry sat across from him, sipping tea and reading the newspaper. The older man looked up and a polite smile settled on his face when he saw Alastair sitting across from him.

“Good morning, Percival. How are you doing this morning?”

“Well enough, Arthur, thank you. James is finally approved for prosthetic therapy, so we’ve had a good morning.”

“Wonderful! Does the physician anticipate any issues?”

“Not so far. Of course, we’ll know more after tomorrow afternoon’s initial meeting with the orthopedic prosthetic specialist.

“Quite so. Ah! Thank you darling!” Harry turned and smiled deeply at Eggsy, who plunked down a saucer for Alastair as well as refilling Harry’s teacup. Eggsy shot Harry a wink and went back to baking.

Alastair looked curiously at the pastry in front of him on the saucer Eggsy had provided. It was some sort of cruller or doughnut, traditionally shaped in a circle and dusted with powdered sugar. However, at the very top of the circle lay a white-chocolate dipped strawberry, as if it were the gemstone on the stop of a ring, and small blueberries encircled it like sapphires. It was incredibly lovely, but Alastair thought it was quite peculiar. He shrugged and bit into the pastry.

Eggsy fiddled with his iPhone, and changed the song. Percival didn’t recognize it at first, and it wasn’t until his phone chirped that it occurred to him that he had in fact heard the song before. For the time being, however, he ignored it in favor of answering the text he’d just received.

But it wasn’t a text. It was a single Snapchat message, sent from “Roxalot.” It wasn’t anything to his eyes. Just a photo of a high heeled shoe with red soles. Across the front was splashed a URL followed by _[red high heel] [ring] [red high heel] [ring] [flame]._ He copied the link quickly before the message self destructed and opened it in his browser.

Oh. _Oh_. That’s why he recognized the song Eggsy had put on.

What displayed before him was a hastily-shot YouTube video of himself, a teen-aged Roxy, and a boombox stereo. They wore black leotards and high heels, cat-eye makeup, Alastair had a Halloween wig on, and both were working and twerking along with Beyonce, affirming that all single ladies should rejoice in their newfound independence. Alastair let out a strangled noise and looked up at Harry, who was watching him over the top of his newspaper. Eggsy and several other members of staff were snickering in the background noise of the Bakery.

“I… I can explain? Rox, I mean Lancelot. Shit. She’d just been dumped and wanted to feel better about herself?” The excuse sounded weak to Alastair’s ears even as he said it.

Harry opened his mouth, shut it, tilted his head as if in consideration, and said, “where was James?”

“Filming. And he was the makeup artist.”

 

“Ah.” Harry turned back to his newspaper, and the Bakery exploded into peals of bright laughter.

 

All Alastair could think, as the heat rose in his face, was _‘I will burn this entire fucking place to the ground.’_


	3. The Entire Kingsmen

The Snapchat war continued for four weeks. Merlin tried unsuccessfully to block the app from the premises and from all Kingsman-issue tech, but his underlings kept circumventing his orders and hacks and replacing it. The humor of it all was too much for them to miss out. The amount of pay dirt people now had on each other was at a level unseen since the Cold War, when not even Kingsman was exempt from Red Mania.

 

  What ended it was the digital equivalent of Hiroshima. 

 

It began easily enough; an unsolicited text from an unknown number appearing simultaneously on every single Kingsman-issued device capable of receiving SMS. It was a private video server, and all the linked video held was the image of a Jolly Roger, wherein the crossed bones were replaces with silenced short-barrel Walther handguns, the song "Ride of the Valkyries" on repeat, and an ominous countdown that would reach it's final zero by the end of the week around dinner time.

Merlin and his techs tried unsuccessfully to trace the video and the texts, but to no avail; who or whatever had sent them was unabashedly skilled at hiding their digital tracks.

So it was that the Kingsmen waited with bated breath for the countdown to zero out.

The countdown ticked down, Eggsy and Harry watching dutifully in Harry's office. Merlin and his techs had the image displayed on a wall where they watched silent. Others watched on their mobiles or tablets, only quiet murmurs and the like shared between them.

Upon reaching 0:00:00:00, the countdown flashed red three times, the crossed guns "fired" a digital spray of confetti, and the skull began laughing a wicked sort of childish laughter. The screen went black and a video came on screen. It was a recorded capture from someone's glasses showing, at various times throughout the recording, every single active knight, a good half of the tech, fleet, and maintenance members, and a not unassuming amount of support staff. Each person that flashed across the screens seemed to be weeping silently in front of a computer. Some were shaking with great sobbing shudders, others were dabbing gently at their eyes with handkerchiefs or tissues. Arthur and Guinevere were together in the video, watching something on their computer screen that had the older king of Kingsmen red eyed and affected, and his young mate sobbing in great wretched sobs that left his face blotchy and his shoulders wracked.

There was no sound in the video to clue in anyone to what they were watching that could turn the most well-trained spies in the world into tearful babies. Nor did it show whose glasses had recorded all of these people. When everyone seemed to be "done" with whatever they had been watching, the video shifted again to showcase a single frame, a surreptitious "over the shoulder" shot of Merlin in the middle of wiping his eyes with a plaid handkerchief. It also showed a frame of the offending video: an old man, sitting on a bench on the moon, a balloon-wrapped present in his hands and tears in his eyes.

The video went black once again, and a digitized voice could be heard from every speaker in Kingsman headquarters that had tuned in: "And the finest spy organization in the world is brought low by a bloody John Lewis commercial. God bless us, every one."

The screen went back to the Jolly Roger image for the video, and everyone watching sat stunned, faces flushing and ears burning at being caught in such a private and humane reaction to something so sweet.

The video crackled audibly again, and the digitized voice could be heard again: "By the way, Merlin? Your security is shite. Outdone by a twinky hacker and his pet Double-O. For shame."

Ringing Scottish curses and poorly-concealed digital laughter were all that could be heard at HQ that day.

 

And that day was what began the greatest prank war the international spy community had ever seen.


End file.
